Umeå, literature, sami life and central museums, they all #JoinUs

Umepedia

Guitars - the Museum

Umepedia edit-a-thon at Arkitektur- och designcentrum

As part of Umepedia, the first Wikipedia City in the Nordic countries, a series of edit-a-thons have been organized in Umeå and also one edit-a-thon in Stockholm at the National Centre for Architecture and Design (sv:Arkitektur- och designcentrum). The edit-a-thons have been organized in order to prepare the articles mainly in Swedish and English, as part of the preparation before the Umepedia Challenge that is taking place the 1-31 May.

During the annual Spring meeting of Swedish Museums the first two QRpedia signs were placed on site in Umeå, at Västerbottens museum and Guitars – the Museum. Two days before we asked the international community to help translate the newly improved articles about the museums to as many languages as possible. We figured that we this way could show what the community can do and impress media, our partners and the GLAM professionals and the conference. The response from the volunteers was incredible and the articles were translated to around 10 languages each!

At the annual Spring meeting we had a chance to give a short presentation about our project and QRpedia for museums for around 30 GLAM professionals. We also had the opportunity to mingle with many more during dinners and social events. There was a large interest from GLAMs to use QRpedia codes in their museums. Also, in time for the event Guitars – the Museum had installed 18 QRpedia codes to different musicians in their collection which was a great addition.

The project has had an incredible response in the local and regional media. As far as we can tell most (or even all?) the newspapers, local TV and radio news programs has picked up the press releases we have sent out.

Women in literature

As a follow up to the Women in Wikipedia project, a bunch of new and old Wikipedians get together once a week at Litteraturhuset (House of Litterature) in Gothenburg to improve articles on main characters that are Women. So far 20 articles have been improved or created.

More work with the Council of the Central Museums

Following the pilot that started in 2012 the Council of the Central Museums has agreed to continue work with Wikimedia Sweden and to contribute with both articles and images. During the year there will be both workshops on batch uploading and editing, training in how to work with stats tools to measure impact and also projects where the museums will collaborate to improve material on specific topics. Also as a result of this agreement all Central museums will become organisational members of Wikimedia Sweden.

Photos and videos of ESC14, #JoinUs

Although the real contest is in May, the meet and greet of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen started in April. Albin Olsson, (user:abbedabb) is on site with a photo accreditation and have already started uploading images and short presentations on video to Commons. Some images have already found their way in to articles, but international help is needed to make use of the rest of the images.